Arab Spring an ‘Islamic Nightmare': Allen West

(Newser)
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The Muslim Brotherhood's victory in Egypt's presidential election proves that "the Arab Spring is nothing more than a radical Islamic nightmare," Rep. Allen West posted today on his Facebook page. "A year ago there were those of us who warned the Obama administration of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Egypt," he noted. "We were castigated as alarmists and loose cannons." But the prediction has come true, he said, citing the "ominous specter ... of the Iranian Revolution." Now it's time for Obama—aka "the second coming of Jimmy Carter"—to "denounce the results of this election, repudiate the Muslim Brotherhood, and all radical Islamist political entities," he wrote, according to Politico. (Read more Allen West stories.)

Here is the fundamental challenge. Islam is what united the centuries-long feuding Arab tribes and gave them the religious impetus to break out the Arabian peninsula and essentially conquer millions of square miles and many other peoples over the last 1300 years, just as the adoption of Christianity by the Roman empire centuries earlier on Christianized the tribal peoples of Europe and parts of the Middle East before the coming of Islam. Islam is all that binds those peoples of the ME together to an extent. The rise of Democracy, spreading out from Britain and the United States replaced Christianity as the binding principle of most Europeans, and now democracy is challenging Islam as the new binding principle in the Middle East, but this struggle is going to take a lot of time,as did the spread Democracy in Europe, Latin America and Asia. But I think less time that had been imagined, because of the communications capabilities that did not exist even two decades ago. It's going to be a tough struggle, and it really has just begun in earnest.